I changed it to Leslie Hill, only that seemed more like a cocktail pianist. Eventually, being an admirer of Jack Benny, I took his name.
The mistake British comedians often make is trying to beat the Americans at their own game - getting visiting American singers on their shows, talking about 'sidewalk' instead of 'pavement,' sitting on high stools in a white dinner jacket doing ballads. That way, you simply end up with a mid-Atlantic mishmash.
I'm single. I don't have a family. I certainly don't have to work. I don't want to be the richest man in the cemetery.
I thought I couldn't afford to take her out and smoke as well. So I gave up cigarettes. Then I took her out and one day I looked at her and thought: 'Oh well,' and I went back to smoking again, and that was better.
Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.
I don't covet images or belongings. My television set and video are rented, any paintings aren't worth a fortune, and money is of little interest.
Do unto others, then run.
Those hot pants of hers were so damned tight, I could hardly breathe.
That's what show business is, sincere insincerity.
The odds against there being a bomb on a plane are a million to one, and against two bombs a million times a million to one. Next time you fly, cut the odds and take a bomb.
Girls are like pianos. When they're not upright, they're grand.
I used to watch all these great fat women in the audience laughing at the comic, and I would think how wonderful it would be to be that man. He was surrounded by pretty girls, he obviously got more money than anyone else, and everyone loved him.
What we've discovered is that Americans seem to love our saucy humor.
A man who fails is funny... if my sketches teach anything, it is that, for the male, sex is a snare and a delusion. What's so corrupting about that?
I sometimes use a girl singer the way Henny Youngman uses his violin - as a bridge between one laugh and the next.
